Not only do butterflies play a vital part in a gardens health, they bring colour and movement to your yard. Encouraging them to your patch is beneficial to say the least.

There is nothing I enjoy more than sitting out in my garden, enjoying the sights, smells and sounds. So for me butterflies are a most welcome visitor, bringing with them a flash of colour. Not only does butterfly gardening attaract this splash or colour it plays an important role in increasing backyard biodiversity.

Before we get started here, we have to understand a few things about butterflies and creating bio-diverse butterfly habitat. Firstly, attracting and keeping butterflies hanging about in your garden means that you need to provide food and shelter for them at every stage of their lifecycle. Yup, that means from caterpillar right through to the attractive adult life phase… so if you can’t stand the grubs, get out of the (butterfly) garden! Butterflies should be a welcome addition to the garden, and, just like loads of native critters, they need all the help we can give them to ensure that don’t disappear from our gardens altogether. Just as we are helping them, they are helping us, by pollinating a range of plants and providing an important link in the food chain!

There are more than 400 species of butterfly in Australia with a significant number of these living on a wing and a prayer due to habitat loss, and removal of key food plants. The bulk of our Aussie butterflies are confined to the tropics, but every state and territory has their own little collection of Lepidoptera (fancy scientific name for the butterfly and moth family), a large proportion of which are really simple to attract to your garden. So, how do we do it? Well, by following a few simple design principles, your garden will be beautified by butterflies in no time!

Designing Your Butterfly Garden

Position

As with all types of garden, the first thing that has to be considered in the construction of a butterfly garden is the position. Butterflies are delicate little things, and are not huge fans of wind, but they love the sun! Butterflies use the early morning sun to warm themselves and retreat to cooler, shadier places during the heat of the day. A spot that is fairly sheltered and protected, but gets a fair bit of sun is ideal… but there is a catch. These little stunners love moisture, not always that easy in a full sun spot.

TOP TIP: Dig a couple of small, shallow depressions, and periodically fill these up with water… the butterflies will thank you for it. In return, you may be fortunate enough to be treated to a display of “puddling”, where butterflies land on these moist depressions and suck the water out of the soil. This often happens “en masse” and is pretty impressive! Pop a couple of flattish rocks into you butterfly garden to give your fluttering friends a place to land and sun themselves, and, if you pay close attention, you may be able to watch the butterflies “courting” each other!

Food

The key to a really successful butterfly garden is to provide both food (and shelter) for all stages of butterfly life; from the egg, to the caterpillar, to the butterfly and then over again. Caterpillars like food plants, while the beautiful adults love a feed of nectar. So, what kind of plants should we be planting? Well, there are some general rules of thumb that apply to most butterflies, but, like people, some butterflies have specific dietary requirements.
As always, it is important to avoid planting any plants that have the potential to be invasive. Unfortunately, one of Australia’s worst garden escapees, Lantana camara, is also a fantastic butterfly attracting plant, and they probably helped spread this plant throughout our bushland. But our native butterflies are happier with some locally native tucker, so avoid the exotics, and go for local plants!

Food Plants for Caterpillars and shelter for Eggs

Alright, we need to be honest here… caterpillars have voracious appetites, and can eat every edible part of their preferred food plants. When gardening for butterflies, it’s important to overcome the fear of caterpillars, and accept that some well munched plants are a sign of a good, working, butterfly gardening. Great egg-laying and caterpillar-munching plants include:

Mistletoes hosted by a number of Australian indigenous trees are also exceptional spots for butterfly egg laying and a food source for many of our native butterflies. Be sure to check for your local listings for specific food plants for local butterflies.

Flowers and Nectar Traps

Colourful, massed beds draw butterflies in and keep them happily moving through the garden. They particularly like blue, yellow and red, but are attracted to a large range of colours, with bold clusters of flowers more effective than single plants dotted through a garden. An excellent idea is to group the plants together according to colour, creating big colourful clusters that butterflies just can’t resist. The shape of the flower is important too, with simple, flat flowers easier for butterflies to extract nectar. Double flowers with their multiple petals are too complex. But daisies, native pelargoniums and bluebells, saltbush plants, and pea flowers are especially useful.

Knowing which butterflies hang out in your neck of the woods is important so you know which food plants to provide, as a few of our rare and threatened butterflies only feed on a small number of locally native plants. The list below is a selection of native plants found in many parts of Australia that may attract butterflies to you garden.

Wildflowers: Just about all of them! Your garden centre should be able to give you a good idea of some local native beauties!

Climbers:Clematis sp., and Wonga Vine (Pandorea pandorana)

Cut the Chemicals

Alright, we have the position and the plants sorted, so what else do we have to do to encourage these ‘flutter-bys’ to our patch? Well, it’s more a case of what not to do, especially when it comes to chemicals in the garden. Not all of us are completely at ease with “creepy-crawly-slimy-slithery-furry-flying” critters and insects in the garden, and tend to declare full-scale chemical warfare at the first sign of insect inhabitants. In order to keep a bio-diverse, butterfly-friendly backyard, we need to seriously consider what chemicals we are using, and why. Insects and invertebrates are an incredibly important part of any ecosystem, and this includes mosquitoes, cockroaches, ants and spiders. We have all heard of the butterfly effect, where a minor action in one location can have devastating “knock-on” effects elsewhere. Well, apply this to your backyard, where the sprinkling of ant granules or the spraying of pesticides could have a detrimental impact on not only the target insect, but a whole host of important invertebrates. Think carefully about chemical use, and, where possible (especially in butterfly gardens) avoid it altogether. After all, a couple of holes in a few leaves is all part of nature!

And it’s that simple. There is no minimum size or space recommended for a butterfly garden. By planting a good mix of food and nectar plants, providing water and moist soil, and avoiding butterfly-battering chemicals, your garden should be a haven of fluttery activity in no time. Consider keeping a butterfly book, tracking the sightings and activities of butterflies and caterpillars in your patch, and get the kids involved in butterfly spotting and “egg hunts”.

Happy butterfly gardening!

N.B. This article has been written for Australian gardens. If you're reading this from around the world, we do hope you've found it a useful stepping stone for your own further research.